Very telling detail in this @nytimes story: the Trump administration's hopeful scenario for Iran is to find a bunch of corrupt IRGC guys who might be willing to shut down the nuclear program in exchange for keeping their kleptocracy "The CIA had produced a series of scenarios that might play out if Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, were killed in an offensive." "One envisioned a hard-line cleric replacing Ayatollah Khamenei — perhaps even a leader more bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon. Another scenario predicted an uprising against the government, a possibility many intelligence officials thought was remote, given the weakness of Iran's opposition." "A number of senior Trump administration officials seized on a third scenario: that a faction of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps more pragmatic than the hard-line clerics might take power... the CIA analysis suggested that as long as the United States did not interfere with the economic activities of this faction, such as its influence in the oil industry, a group of officers might be conciliatory toward the United States." nytimes.com/2026/03/02/us/po…